America May Be Beyond Saving

In case you missed this bit of batshit crazy insanity from the far-right QAnon cult this week, Rachel Maddow breaks it down for you. And remember, Republicans in the Arizona legislature are true believers in the QAnon cult. They are being elected to office by these batshit crazy insane people from safe Republican districts. Be very afraid for the future of our country. America may be beyond saving.

Transcript:

MADDOW: Okay, it`s actually kind of simple. You just have to listen closely. At the beginning, when you`re first starting to hear it, it won`t seem like it makes much sense. But just stick with it, let it wash over you, even the Mussolini part, and eventually it will sink in and make sense.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

M.L.: General Patton is the grandson of Abraham Lincoln.

Fact Check: Though not directly descended from George Washington, George S. Patton traced some of his English colonial roots to George Washington’s great-grandfather. He was also descended from England’s King Edward I through Edward’s son Edmund of Woodstock, 1st Earl of Kent.

MIKE PENNY: Lincoln, yeah.

M.L.: All right. General Patton had a brother which was Benito Mussolini as well who came — so General Patton was the son of William Wallace Lincoln. Benito Mussolini was the son of Thomas “Tad” Lincoln, all right?

Fact check: Here is the Lincoln Family Tree. George S. Patton is not descended from the Lincoln family. George S. Patton did not have a brother – definitely not Italian Fascist dictator Benito Mussolini, who is also not descended from the Lincoln family; Benito Mussolini‘s father is Alessandro Mussolini – Patton had a sister named Anne Wilson “Nita” Patton.

Joseph Kennedy, the older brother of John F. Kennedy, presumed dead in World War II, was not dead. [Definitely dead.] He went into hiding for protection. He had children. Joseph Kennedy begat General Michael Flynn who happens to be first cousins to John-John and his siblings as well.

Trump is the biological son of General Patton which makes him first cousins to John-John and the Kennedys as well. It`s all about the blood line. It`s all about the blood line.

Fact Check: This would come as a surprise to Trump’s father, Fred Trump (right). George S. Patton had three children, Beatrice Smith, Ruth Ellen, and George Patton IV. Are these idiots claiming Trump’s “sainted” mother, Mary Anne MacLeod Trump, had an illicit affair with George S. Patton?  Donald Trump was born in New York on June 14, 1946. George S. Patton died in occupied Germany on December 21, 1945. Patton was serving as military governor of occupied Germany at the time he would have had this alleged hookup with Mary Anne.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MADDOW: I told you it was simple. I told you it was simple. See, it`s all about the blood line.

See how it`s — the Mussolini, Lincoln, and the — Patton, Mussolini. So those two gentlemen are promoters of the QAnon conspiracy theory which gained all sorts of improbable traction on the right during the presidency of Donald Trump, and they`re still around.

QAnon folks think that the — or propound the idea that the entire American political and cultural establishment, all the Democrats and lots of celebrities too, they`re all a big Satan-worshipping cabal of blood- drinking child sex traffickers. And crucially, Donald Trump is the one who will defeat them all and emerge victorious and all the Democrats will be sent to Guantanamo and there will be mass public executions and blood will run in the streets.

I know some of this feels hard to follow at first. It can be hard to sort of translate into sane. But for something that happened today, it`s worth trying to catch what our dudes said here right at the end of that clip.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

M.L.: Trump is the biological son of General Patton which makes him first cousins to John-John and the Kennedys.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MADDOW: Donald Trump is the biological first cousin of former President John F. Kennedy and the rest of the Kennedy family. He`s not. That`s the idea.

Yesterday, hundreds of Americans, hundreds of our fellow Americans, QAnon supporters, gathered in Dallas, Texas at Dealey Plaza, which is have President John F. Kennedy was assassinated. And they turned up yesterday and waited around for hours because they rightfully believed in their heart of hearts, they truly, honestly, un-ironically believed that President Kennedy`s son, JFK Jr., was going to reveal himself at the site where his father died to announce that not only was he not dead himself but he was reentering public life just in time to become Donald Trump`s running mate in 2024.

I tell you that this wasn`t a joke to these folks and they earnestly believed it. Some of them did have shirts made up for the occasion. This one says Trump/Kennedy, Keep the World Great. This one says Trump/JFK Jr. 2024. They think that JFK Jr. is alive and they`re going to run for president and vice president in 2024.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Did we land on the moon?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MADDOW: Did we land on the moon? No.

They also shared cool new thoughts on the moon landing. Did we land on the moon? No.

John F. Kennedy Jr., according to these folks, was expected to reveal himself at 12:29 p.m., the exact time President Kennedy was shot, at precisely that time the crowd piously recited the Pledge of Allegiance. But then, weirdly, he didn`t turn up.

Why on November 2? President Kennedy was assassinated on November 22, 1963 – or was he? Oooh!

Neither JFK Jr. nor his dad nor anybody else from the Kennedy blood line was, you know — appeared mystically at Dealey Plaza. This is all insane, right?

But it`s hundreds of people who believe Democrats and celebrities are secret blood drinking pedophiles, stood around for hours to witness what they believe would be the re-incarnation of the several deceased Democrat and celebrities who are certainly not blood drinking pedophiles, to watch the son of John f. Kennedy joined Donald Trump, his first cousin on the presidential ticket to 2024.

If you talk to people who follow QAnon, who sort of track this train of online extremism, the whole JFK Jr.`s coming back to run with Trump thing is considered a fringe believe even within the QAnon universe. This is something that really — around the outer edges of that movement.

But with that in mind, that just really makes it particularly striking, that this many people showed up in Texas. This week, to rally around a conspiracy so fringe, it`s rejected by even some of the most devout QAnon promoters. It`s funny, but not funny ha-ha.

What are we supposed to think about the fact that a group of people can mobilize effectively in decent numbers around such an extreme conspiracy theory about Donald Trump`s presumed return to power? Something that is so on the outer fringes of those kinds of conspiratorial beliefs, that even people in the middle of those conspiracy theories consider it enough to act on.

Joining us now is Ben Collins. He`s a senior reporter for NBC News. He covers disinformation and extremism and Internet.

Ben, thanks for being here I really appreciate you making time.

BEN COLLINS, NBC NEWS CORRESPONDENT: Thank you.

MADDOW: It is easy to sort of point and drop your jaw and be agog at this. But I feel like one of the — I feel like you`ve been smart about how our fellow Americans. And these are people who are politically engaged in their own way. And people, these folks are looking for something and believing they are finding it within these strains.

Did you feel surprise that there were so many people who actually turned up there? Given how obscure and far out these theories are that motivated them even?

COLLINS: Yes, Rachel, I was shocked about this frankly. Look in the QAnon universe, this is like a denomination about JFK, Jr. thing.

Let`s back up to what QAnon is, right, it`s this idea that there`s this guy named Q embedded in the government, he was saying there was a big secret plan from Donald Trump to save the world from pedophiles. At the end of it, all these Satanic pedophiles who they believe are like Hillary Clinton and Fox cinematic universe characters would be killed on the streets on live television. This is why this is scary, because all these people believe this and are hoping for it.

But Q, that messenger at the heart of, who was posting on EndChan, that message for the hosted white supremacy, Q, explicitly said, look, he kind of got sick of his followers. In December 2018, he said look, this is not true. The JFK Jr. thing, he is not alive, he is not coming back, also, flat earth, not real. And also, there was a third thing that he said, which is elections are safe. Don`t worry about. He said this on December 2018.

So, a lot of QAnon followers, moved off of. That the majority of them have moved off of that. And they have moved on two different kinds of series, but there is this one subset that is extremely religious subset that is made Donald Trump basically messiah in the space. And JFK Jr. as his like ostensible running mate when it comes back to life.

It`s extremely religious, but they do firmly believe the stuff. [a religious cult,]

MADDOW: Ben, is it Texas specific? Or did people come from around the country to be in Texas for this thing?

COLLINS: People came from around the country. They came to me Telegram influencers. Telegram is sort of the Wild West, it`s like Facebook five years ago or no one`s getting man-to-man or wet, everybody is getting covered because they were even free speech. There are fake JFK Jr. accounts on there, they sell things like Trump coins, may try to get people to give them cryptocurrency, and Trump coins as well.

And there`s these two other guys, they don`t even use the real names. Their names are a bunch of words with letters at the end of it. And they have hundreds of thousands of followers on Telegram, and that`s who showed up for these things today. It wasn`t even the name brand QAnon people you would know from the insurrection, it was a bunch of people who wrote a following since then, it`s kind of grown its own new life since then.

MADDOW: By necessity, you have to think of things that happened in the real world, not just online, as an escalation. Once people leave the keyboard, and get out from behind the keyboard and actually physically go somewhere, and show their face, and dress up, and get the t-shirt, and hold the flag. It is an escalation. It is in a renewed commitment in effect to that subculture in those beliefs.

COLLINS: Yeah. Two major points there. First of all, once you deplatform these people from Facebook and Twitter, they go away largely. These groups are not going to stick. But they are much more committed, these people were livestreaming to each other, and they were just reaffirming their own sort of literature. They were creating their own language in vocabulary about how to talk about this. About how to talk to each other about this religion they were creating in real-time.

And the scary thing is, even the people who think they`re nuts in the QAnon community, the endgame is still there, the endgame is still, let`s go murder our enemies. If we get rid of these enemies, if we get rid of Hillary Clinton, if we get rid of all these people who we believe are killing children, for their blood, and everything will be okay. And this is a tiny subset of a much larger movement. And all of them believe this.

MADDOW: Ben Collins, senior reporter for NBC News covering this information, extremism, and the internet — Ben, thank you very much for being here. It`s spooky an unsteadily story. Thanks.

COLLINS: Thank you.